OLYMPIODOREAN NEOPLATONISM IN ALEXANDRIA AND CONSTANTINOPLE: NEW EVIDENCE IN THEOPHYLACT SIMOCATTA’S HISTORY AND LETTERS

Abstract The Alexandrian community guided by Olympiodorus the Younger ( c. 500–after 565 c.e .) shaped a distinctive Neoplatonist philosophical curriculum during the sixth century c.e . Usener hypothesized that the school’s teaching and manuscripts were transmitted to Constantinople when Stephanus of Alexandria took up an ‘ecumenical professorship’ at the invitation of Heraclius. That hypothesis, since expanded, has been subjected to a rigorous challenge by Roueché, who points out that textual evidence is lacking. This article advances new evidence for Usener’s proposal, by identifying characteristically Olympiodorean language and philosophical commitments in a passage from the proem to Theophylact Simocatta’s History §11–13, paralleled in Letter 1. For example, Simocatta assumes a human capacity for consistently ‘embodied contemplation’ ( θεωρία σωματωθεῖσα ), which Olympiodorus’ own text and modern scholarship treat as peculiar to his school; and Simocatta appropriates the Phaedrus ’ cosmology with the phrase περίγειος κόσμος in a manner found elsewhere only in Olympiodorus. Other distinctive features of Simocatta’s language draw attention to the breadth of his Christian and non-Christian philosophical sources. Further study may shed light on the textual transmission of Alexandrian Platonism from the sixth century.